zlacker

>>andren+(OP)
Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college.

I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the things I read on this website. But just imagine for a moment how all this appears to an aspiring programmer when she wakes up in the morning and checks her favorite technical content aggregator.

Like, yeah, none of you are saying that ALL women are less capable than ALL men, but what I'm reading here is the subtext. When I pursue a career in this field, how will my coworkers perceive me? Will I be treated with respect? Or will I be seated next to someone who is convinced that there is a gender war going on, and thereby offended by my very presence?

>>novia+bm
There is the flip side too. I wouldn't want to be known as the diversity hire. I want to be judged on my work and my skills. Not on what chromosomes I carry or what my melenin level is.

The more we keep framing things in the context of hiring to meet gender based quotas, the more people will see us as diversity hires. I would hate that more than knowing someone doesn't like me because of my gender because that persons mind I can maybe change via my skills and work.

>>rvo+QC
Yes there are "diversity" hires, that is, people who are hired not based on their technical skill, but based on the desire of management to have more women/POC on the team. There are often financial incentives (bonuses) ties to improving diversity numbers, so there will of course be skepticism when a female junior dev gets promoted to senior dev, then manager in a two years. I've been on hiring committees where the team gave a candidate a low score on technical ability and said "we don't want this person" and because of some desired biological trait they posses, they were hired anyway.

That being said, I've seen it with males as well, but it has been more of the one guy on the team gets his MBA/college buddy hired kind of thing. In both cases, employees would be rightfully skeptical because of outside influences in the hiring/promotion process that are trying to purposefully achieve some end goal.

My wife, who formerly worked as a software dev, hated this aspect of the industry because there were so many women-in-tech groups that were trying to help (a.k.a. coddle) her achieve something she could easily achieve on her own by her own technical acumen. In similar vain, I've gotten jobs because of who I know more than what I know before (in my case it was because I'm a submarine vet and the hiring manager was also a former submariner), and yeah, it does undermine the sense of accomplishment that comes with doing something on your own.